“Leira, please,” Cort gasped. “Take some of the bags.”

  “What? I’m carrying mine. Give them to Quez. I run out of spores if I’m carrying too much stuff.”

  “That is not true,” Cort said as Quez relieved him of the Kaia fridge and two of the backpacks, leaving Cort with just his own bag and the jetpack.

  He groaned and rolled out his shoulders. Carrying all that shit around was causing him more trouble than his actual injuries. He unwrapped Leira’s blood-soaked dress from his waist and examined his wound.

  Leira’s fungus-bandage thing had been absorbed, forming a translucent sort of scab. Blood oozed from the edges, but that was a lot better than gushing.

  Cort bunched the dress up and handed it to Leira. She clipped her shriek and then took her bag from Quez and stuffed the dress inside.

  They moved down to the next flight of stairs and were assailed by the clangor of battle. The visible sliver of the doorway revealed a jumbled mass of Malikauan warriors.

  Quez stopped just before the bottom, but Cort shoved him out, and then he and Leira followed. They entered a large, open pavilion, lit by dozens of wall-mounted torches.

  Damn. The fight was more brutal than Cort expected. His eyes first went to the pool of water at the center of the space—milky-red, filled with bobbing corpses. More dead and wounded were littered throughout the space, marking the trail of the conflict.

  One side was severely outnumbered, maybe four-to-one. They still held their shield formation, but they’d allowed the larger force to surround them on all sides. Even as Cort watched, more men and women fell. For a fight among so-called brothers and sisters that had begun as they stood shoulder to shoulder in victory, it was… vicious. A big mess of bloodied bodies screaming their heads off as they crushed corpses underfoot and slipped on gore.

  Leira muttered something like, “…fucking zealots…”

  Quez dropped the bags and the fridge—Cort winced as it hit the stone ground—and ripped off his headdress with fumbling hands. He threw it down and stomped on it, grinding his heel.

  “What do I do?” he said, toneless, eyes watery as he clutched at his face, digging his fingers in beneath his eyes. Torchlight glistened off his sweaty face. “What do I do?”

  “Handle it,” Cort said. He clapped Quez on the back and moved toward the fight, taking his hammer from his shoulder into both hands.

  “Cort will back you up,” Leira said. “Wait, Cort, that’s a bad idea. You want more pink stuff?”

  Just then, another body appeared, falling as if from the sky and smacking the ground right in front of Quez. This one was alive and screaming, though, and bleeding profusely from his face.

  “Ha!” Leira said, looking up. “Looks like Gwil made quick work of this idiot. You wanna smash him, Cort? He might be able to heal.”

  Cort hefted his hammer but furrowed his brow. “This… isn’t the same person. That guy wasn’t this tall.”

  Quez man was sputtering, his jaw quivering. “Jaguar,” he rasped. “Not the Warden. One of the Five Jaguars.”

  “Do I kill him or not?” Cort said.

  “Do it,” Leira said.

  “I-I-”

  Cort rolled his eyes at Quez’s floundering, but then the rise of a roaring clatter told him that indecision was not what had him stunned. Dozens upon dozens of the warriors had broken away from the main fight and were charging toward them.

  “Save the Jaguar!”

  “Your Holiness!”

  “Back up, Quez,” Cort said. He hastily looked around and then waved Leira toward an archway that led to a separate pavilion. They needed a choke point if they were gonna stand against this many. “Quez!”

  “I am Sworn Guardian,” the fool shouted. “Stand down! I command you to stand down!”

  Fucking hell. Cort ran in from the side, his hammer crunching through the front line as he put himself between Quez and the horde.

  He shoved them back with the shaft of his hammer, but they poured around the sides. Quez finally got the fucking message, though, and raised his weapons.

  Cort reached back with his hammer and cleaved through the warriors on their left side, giving them some space to start working toward the arch. He pushed Quez in that direction.

  A few of the warriors went and retrieved the body of the Jaguar guy, which was apparently their goal. That accomplished, a handful of them retreated—probably think I’m a demon or some shit—but others arrived at the same time.

  Falling spores, pink and red, dusted Cort’s vision. A smirk peeled over his clenched teeth as he flattened some poor bastard like a beer can.

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  Quez was still shouting nonsense about Challe and the Warden and whatever these people believed in. Cort laughed at how he described the Leviathan teleporter as ‘the birth canal of a metal goddess’. But Quez’s words fell on deaf ears.

  The warriors were decently skilled with their clubs, but they did a lot of needless spinning and twirling. Too flashy.

  A woman ducked under his hammer swing and hooked her club around the head. She threw all her weight back, making Cort stumble and exposing him to a bladed club strike that sliced into his back wound.

  Cort screamed and kicked the woman in the gut, making her drop her club. He slammed his hammer down on someone else’s foot and then turned on the warrior who’d hit him in the back. With both hands, Cort grabbed the man’s head and crushed his skull, fingers crunching through bone.

  He winced as he turned away and picked his hammer back up, glad that Quez hadn’t seen that kill. It was a bit too demonic.

  A few warriors were trying to prevent them from getting to the archway, but Leira’s spores had rendered them dumb. A couple of them had sat down to play pattycake and one was sucking on the end of his club.

  He and Quez made it through the arch. Cort turned and raised his hammer overhead before slamming it down, collapsing the floor immediately surrounding the arch.

  Most of the warriors that had come to challenge them retreated at that point. Many of them had been killed, and they’d retrieved their Jaguar, so they went back to slaughtering their own comrades. Cort shook his head. They could’ve just taken that strangely tall bastard for free for all he cared.

  “We need to go help them,” Quez shouted.

  “I know. We will, but just… gimme… wuhhhh.” Cort fell back against the wall and slid down to the floor. His wound was screaming, and a lot of hot blood was pouring down his leg.

  “Roll over, lemme fix it,” Leira said, kneeling beside him.

  Lying there, Cort caught sight of yet another falling body. Two, actually.

  ***

  Carrying Challe in his arms, Gwil landed in the middle of a big fight.

  The storm had stopped pouring out of the woman’s body, and she seemed only half-conscious. A strange filminess distorted her jadestones. Gwil had felt it when her power suddenly vanished and then ran to catch her. Only upon hitting the ground did he realize there’d been no need to do that—Nirva would’ve saved her. But whatever, it was better not to let someone get splattered, even if they could heal.

  Strange though, was that, despite Challe’s state, the storm was raging outside the Malikauan temple. It must have been the peak that Claws—and Jayson, too—had mentioned. The rain had become barraging hail. The thunder cracked at a furious, relentless pace. As if some deranged blacksmith hammered metal in a forge that spanned the sky. Even in this vast shelter of stone, the wind could be felt, like a mad thing scraping.

  Feather-garbed warriors surrounded Gwil and Challe, and they were going crazy killing each other. Most of them looked shocked and then horrified and enraged by Challe’s sudden appearance in their midst.

  The warriors swarmed them from all sides. Gwil batted away—and ate—a few club strikes as he wrestled to get some space. Then he jumped and focused his Nirva into his legs as he performed a spinning double-kick. The impacted warriors were thrown back, and like a wave, they crashed against their comrades, knocking more to the ground.

  Gwil thought even that leggy clone guy would’ve been impressed by that kick. He glanced around the battlefield. Where was Legs anyway? Much as he hated Tezca, he did like the way the clones had nice, easy-to-remember names.

  While looking around, Gwil grasped the nature of this battle between the warriors. He was in the thick of the bigger force, and that group had pushed the smaller force against a wall and surrounded them. Where they clashed, so many corpses were piling up.

  Gwil mostly just wanted to break up the fight, since they were killing each other for no good reason. He shifted his hold on Challe—who was stiff and clinging to him with twenty clawlike fingers—and then lowered his shoulder and plowed through the still-disturbed ranks of warriors.

  He broke through the front line and prepared to fight off the smaller force, but they instead cheered—some even smiling—and pushed past Gwil, gaining some ground on their opponents and forming up in defense of him and Challe. They yelled nice things about Challe as they pressed on.

  “Thanks!” Gwil shouted.

  “What are you doing?” a voice shouted from above. Gwil looked up and saw Tezca and Claws leaning over the railing above. “Who’s the coward now? Running away just ‘cause you got a little hurt.”

  “I’m not running away!” Gwil yelled back. “Challe fell. You get down here.”

  Claws vaulted the railing, but Tezca caught him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him back up.

  “You come back up here,” Tezca barked. “And bring me the Vessel!”

  “Just jump down and get her,” Gwil said. “You’ll probably bounce.”

  “I will not be made to move through my own domain in such an uncouth manner! I’ll take the stairs. Stay where you are!”

  Gwil shook his head and stepped forward to work toward breaking up the fight.

  “Gwil! Hey, Gwil!”

  Leira. He turned and found her peeking out from an archway that stood at the end of this wall. Gwil looked between her and the battle. Maybe he’d better go over there to put Challe down, and maybe rest for a second…

  He hurried over and found himself wobbling and shaking. Behind him, the warriors—who Gwil figured must be loyal to Challe instead of the Warden—shifted their position to put themselves between the archway and the bigger force.

  “Eagle-man! Look, Challe, it’s Eagle-man.” She shook her head once—her eyes were squeezed shut, and she had her face buried against Gwil’s chest.

  Gwil hopped over a hole in the floor and made it through the arch. Eagle-man sat against the wall with his knees drawn to his chest, staring at Challe. Cort was beside him, half-lying down and looking dazed.

  “Hey guys, what’s going on?” Gwil said.

  “Nothing much,” Leira said. “We’re giving our friend Quez some support while he waffles against the mindless zealotry of his friends and family.”

  Gwil nodded.

  “So,” she twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “You wanna get out of here?”

  “Can’t,” Gwil said, struggling to catch his breath. He had no Nirva in his limbs—it was all working his organs and ribs. “I have business with the king.”

  “What?” Cort sat partway upright. “I can’t fight a Monarch right now, Gwil.”

  “Bet you will if I give you more pink stuff,” Leira muttered.

  “An axolotl told me to give Yuma a ‘booma’ on its behalf. I gotta do it.”

  Cort made a fist and bit down on his knuckle.

  Leira fidgeted with her eyeflower. “I have an idea,” she said slowly. “Gwil, the king might be too strong. Would you be okay just drawing him away from here?”

  “Yeah! That’s what we should do. Just as long as I punch him in the face first. At least I think that’s what a booma is.”

  “We can do that,” Leira said, nodding her head excitedly. “We can use the Spike as bait. Yuma will follow us like a starving dog. Eh, Quez? Challe? What’d you think of that idea? Gwil will deal with the Warden, then we lure the Leviathan away. Your people will be safe and free.”

  Challe only squeezed Gwil harder. Quez had no reaction whatsoever.

  “Oh right,” Leira said. “You guys don’t even know what the Leviathan is.”